The NRO is the USA government agency that launches and operates spy satellites, including photographic satellites and electronic eavesdropping satellites (in conjunction with the NSA, CIA, DIA and the rest of the military "alphabet soup" agencies). While the NRO was created in 1961, its existence was not officially declassified until 1992, although the number of billions of dollars it spends is still secret. The fact that the US operates spy satellites was first officially acknowledged by President Carter in 1977, although this was not a secret to the Soviet Union and other USA military opponents. It is likely that the NRO and other military agencies have spent more on space than the ostensibly civilian NASA, and part of NASA (especially the Space Shuttle) has been tasked to work for the NRO, including using the Shuttle to launch spy satellites.

from the NRO official website: "Supra Et Ultra" is Latin for "Above and Beyond"

the selection of the Earth in the photo is centered on Sinai in Egypt. The Dead Sea is visible on the right. This part of the world is probably surveilled by NRO more than most other locations.

The US National Reconnaissance
Office, which operates spy satellites, was conducting a simulation of
a plane crash into their headquarters (near Dulles Airport in Virginia)
during the September 11 attacks!

This war game was not a "terrorism"
exercise - but it did simulate a plane going off course (on the approach
to nearby Dulles Airport) and crashing into the NRO's headquarters, control
center for US spy satellites. This war game was to test the emergency
response procedures in the event of this type of accident, and included
practice evacuation of the buildings. It is very damning that the war
game planners (of all of the war games, not merely this one) ensured that
the NRO's headquarters was largely evacuated at precisely the time that
9/11 was taking place, which minimized the number of officials who were
able to monitor the events via the Pentagon's satellite intelligence systems.

Agency planned exercise on Sept.
11 built around a plane crashing into a building

"In what the government describes as a bizarre
coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last
Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings.
But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.
"Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance
Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate
jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters
building after experiencing a mechanical failure.
The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles
International Airport. Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines
Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon
-- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes
before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around
9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.
The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy
satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA

www.questionsquestions.net/topics/question.html
today's question...
Brian Salter, qq editor
5 June 2003: Why were 3000 NRO employees sent home after 9/11?
There have been a number of disinfo limited hangouts floating around,
all of them designed to offer apparently revealing inside details of 9/11
but actually serving the purpose of whitewashing evidence of US govt.
complicity. One which has been hanging around for a while centers on the
terrorist training exercise that the NRO (National Reconaissance Office)
had scheduled the same morning of the attacks. The super-secret NRO happens
to be the agency which operates US spy satellites.
A mainstream article about it is here:
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm
The limited hangout build around this is that the 9/11 "terrorists"
somehow learned about the secret exercise in advance, and "piggybacked"
their own attack on the same date in order to confuse US defences. This
is used as a supposed explanation for lack of action on prior warnings,
failure of air defences to operate, etc, on the assumption that military
and intel personnel thought that everything going on was part of the the
"exercise". I don't know of any serious 9/11 researcher who
finds this a credible overall theory, given the fact that there is an
abundance of evidence pointing beyond such a scenario, to official complicity
and specific prior knowledge. This has been discussed very thoroughly
among researchers.
That aside, there is an interesting detail in the above article:
"The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's
spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency
headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold
said."
Sent home... why?? Recently, I heard one alternative speculation about
this which deserves some inquiry. Namely, that certain high-ranking NRO
staff may have needed this time to eliminate or alter satellite surveillance
of the Washington, DC area during the attacks. Note that it has been alleged
for years that the US has 24 hour high resolution satellite monitoring
of the capitol and surrounding regions, where critical government institutions
are located. If so, there would then be a record of Flight 77's flight
path and imact. Would there be something there to hide?
With the recent 9/11 Commission hearings on 9/11 air defences having stirred
up debate, this is perhaps something to consider.